https://www.truthdig.com/articles/fear-vs-fear/
Fear vs. Fear
The old rules of politics no longer apply. The only language understood by Donald Trump and his coterie of con artists, billionaires, generals, misfits and Christian fascists—and a Democratic Party that has sold us out—is fear. Calling out Trump’s lies and racism does not matter. Calling out his nepotism and corruption does not matter. Calling out the criminality of his administration does not matter. Calling out its incompetence and idiocy does not matter. Calling out the abject subservience of the ruling elites to corporate power does not matter. Trump and his Democratic Party opponents are immune to moral suasion. The more we engage in this empty kabuki theater with its predictable outlandish outbursts, usually from Trump, and predictable outraged responses, usually from Democrats, the more certain are government paralysis and corporate tyranny. The drivel and invective that passes for political discourse is a giant hamster wheel that goes nowhere. It masks the root causes of our political and economic decline and fractures the population into warring camps that increasingly communicate through violence, which is why the United States has suffered mass shootings with three or more fatalities more than 30 times this year.
We will save ourselves only by pitting power against power. And since our two major political parties slavishly serve corporate power, and have few substantial differences on nearly all major issues from imperialism to unfettered capitalism, we must start from scratch. The political personalities, including those on the left such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Bernie Sanders, Ilhan Omar and Elizabeth Warren, are distractions. They have no power within the Democratic Party, as Nancy Pelosi often reminds us. They serve to reduce politics to personal feuds, the currency of the vast reality show perpetrated for profit by corporate media. The daily back and forth by these personalities diverts our attention from the rapid consolidation of wealth and power by the ruling elites, the degradation of the ecosystem into a toxic wasteland and the eradication of basic freedoms and rights. The American political system is not salvageable. It will be overthrown in a mass uprising—a version of which we saw recently in Puerto Rico—or vast swaths of the globe will become uninhabitable and the rich will feed like ghouls off the mounting human misery. These are the two stark options. And we have very little time left.
The Democrats, if they had a functioning political party and were not owned and managed by corporations, could easily displace Trump and demolish the Republican Party in electoral landslide after landslide. From poll after poll, as Charles Derber points out in his book “Welcome to the Revolution,” we know what the majority of Americans want. A whooping 82% think wealthy people have too much power and influence in Washington, with 70% singling out large businesses as having too much power. Nearly 80% support stronger rules and enforcement of regulations on the financial industry. Nearly half of Americans think economic inequality is “very big,” and 34% concede it is “moderately big.” Almost 60% of registered voters and 51% of registered Republicans favor raising to $18,000 from $14,820 the maximum amount that workers can make and still be eligible for the earned income tax credit. A staggering 96% of Americans, including 96% of Republicans, believe money in politics is to blame for the dysfunction of the American system. Close to 80% believe wealthy Americans should pay higher taxes. Nearly 60% favor raising the federal minimum wage requirement to $12 an hour. Sixty-one percent, including 42% of Republicans, approve of labor unions. Sixty percent of Americans think “[i]t is the federal government’s responsibility to make sure all Americans have healthcare,” and 60% of registered voters favor “expanding Medicare to provide health insurance to every American.” Nearly 60% favor free early-childhood education, and 76% are “very concerned” about climate disruption. Eighty-four percent support requiring background checks for all gun buyers. Fifty-eight percent of Americans believe abortion should be legal in all or most cases.
A genuine populism and New Deal socialism are the only hope of thwarting the rise of neofascist movements. This, however, will never be permitted by the Democratic Party hierarchy, led by figures such as Pelosi, Joe Biden and Senate Democratic Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, who are acutely aware they would instantly lose their power without the prop of hundreds of millions of corporate dollars. They, and their corporate sponsors, will block all reform even if it means another four years of Trump and the extinguishing of democracy. The only thing they have to sell us is fear—fear of Trump and the Russians. While Trump sells the fear of immigrants, Muslims, people of color and those he brands as socialists. This is a toxic diet.
The greatest traitors in America are not Trump and his neofascist minions shouting “Lock her up” or “Send her home,” but a decadent, morally bankrupt, self-identified liberal elite consumed by greed. They orchestrated the social inequality that permits Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates and Warren Buffett to control more wealth than the bottom 50% of the American population. They pay lip service to the climate crisis but have not done anything to halt the sixth great mass extinction. The fossil fuel industry, under the Democrats and Republicans, continues to pump carbon emissions into the atmosphere. The polar ice caps disappear. The sea levels rise. The deforestation expands. The clogging of the oceans with floating islands of plastic that poisons our food chain is unchecked. No one among the ruling elites has any intention of restraining a bloated, out-of-control military that consumes half of all discretionary spending while half the country lives in poverty or near poverty, the federal deficit looks set to exceed $1 trillion by the end of this fiscal year and the nation’s infrastructure disintegrates.
All meaningful resistance takes place outside the formal political structures. The 10-day protest in April in London led by Extinction Rebellion—which saw 1,130 people arrested as crowds repeatedly shut down major parts of the city in demonstrating against the failure of the ruling elites to confront the climate catastrophe—is what we must emulate. Extinction Rebellion has called for a strike by workers around the world in October, a strike in which thousands of arrests are anticipated.
We have exceeded the 350 parts per million of atmospheric CO2 that climate scientists said was the level at which we still might have thwarted societal collapse. Last July was the hottest in recorded history. We are currently at 415 ppm of CO2, with enough heat in the system to ensure 450 ppm of CO2 within a decade. A temperature rise of 2 degrees Celsius above the pre-Industrial Age measurement guarantees catastrophic climate disruptions.
“We’re looking at the collapse of the world’s agriculture systems,” Roger Hallam, the co-founder of Extinction Rebellion, told me when we spoke in London. “Long before the sea level rises, we’re going to have a world economic collapse because we’re not going to be able to feed ourselves. That’s what’s shitting everyone. That’s why people are in a panic. In the U.N., in academia, in the elites, they’re looking at this. They’re pulling their hair out. We have this repressed media space so it’s not obvious to everyone. I think this is the role of Extinction Rebellion—to break through that repression. Once you break through it, people will say, yeah. The whole thing is beyond bad.”
“We need to insulate all housing stock,” he said. “We need to turn over the economy so that it’s completely electrified. We need to have all the energy coming from renewables. We need a social transformation, so the rich are taxed and pay their fair share. We need to organize communities around quality of life so that people can learn to adapt to these changes, these traumatic changes. This is a matter of physics. It’s not a matter of political opinion. These changes are coming. It’s far too late for massive increases in temperature not to happen. What we’re looking at now is whether we’re going to go extinct or not. I know that sounds like science fiction, but it’s true. We need to look at the figures. It’s like going to the doctor. This is cancer. You don’t like it, that’s fine, but it’s not going to stop you from dying. The only option is do you want to accept that this is the situation? Or don’t you? If you don’t, you’re going to die. If you do, there is a chance. But you’re going to have to get a move on it.”
“We’re saying this to everyone in society, not just to progressives,” he said. “Wake up! At the end of the day, we’ve all got kids. We’ve all got young people we know. If we have any empathy or responsibility for the young generation, it’s all hands on deck. The most civilized way of dealing with the situation is to come together as a country, as a world, in citizen assemblies, and allow the ordinary people of the world to decide what to do. After all, it’s their lives.”
By stepping outside the system, including in our voting patterns, we begin to make the ruling elites afraid. Change comes from pressure. But if we are not willingly to become outcasts, that pressure will never happen. It was not the progressive wing of the Democratic Party, for example, led by Rep. Ocasio-Cortez, that first proposed the Green New Deal. It was articulated 12 years ago by the Green Party, which called for massive job and public works programs to transition our energy infrastructure to renewable energy. The deal was promoted by Howie Hawkins when he ran for the governorship in New York in 2014 and by Jill Stein during her 2016 presidential run.
The proposal for a Green New Deal by the Green Party has a fundamental difference from what is touted by progressive Democrats. It does not argue that structural change and a transition to renewable energy will come by making alliances with corporate power. Instead, it insists that we bring about a transformational change in our economy by crushing corporate power and establishing a socialist system.
“The Democrats don’t have real solutions,” Hawkins, who is seeking the Green Party nomination for the presidency, told me in New York. “Trump is a racist scapegoater. He is a freeloading leech who doesn’t pay his own employees, contracts, taxes. He lies to the people. He needs to go. But if you replace him with a Democrat, they’re not going to enact ‘Medicare for All.’ They’re not going to do a Green New Deal. They are backing Trump, who now wants a war for oil in Venezuela, while the planet is burning from burning oil. It’s madness.”
“The historic role of third parties in this country is to raise issues that major parties won’t take up,” he went on. “Like the Liberty Party and the question of slavery. They were the abolitionists when the Whigs and the Democrats didn’t want to touch the issue. We can go for 150 years of history and show how that’s the case.”
“We are not going to get to 100 percent clean energy if Exxon gets to reinvest its earnings in more oil exploration extraction and sales,” he said. “The Koch brothers and all their interests in the oil industry, those should be publicly owned. We take the earnings, because we’ll use fossil fuels during the transition, and reinvest it in renewable. That’s the socialist solution. You can get some socialist programs, like Social Security or Medicare for All, which Bernie Sanders champions, but as long as the capitalist oligarchy has power based on their concentrated ownership of the economy, which translates into political power, they can roll it back.”
“When I talk about a Green New Deal, I’m talking about an economic bill of rights like [Franklin] Roosevelt called for at the end of his 1944 State of the Union address,” Hawkins said. “A job. Income. Health care. Housing. Education. The civil rights picked that up with the [1963] March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, with the Freedom Budget, and the [1968] Poor People’s Campaign. But we still don’t have it. The other part is 100 percent clean energy by 2030. We have to reorganize all sectors [of the economy]—agriculture, manufacturing, the military, transportation—toward sustainability. Or we’ll never get to 100 percent clean energy.”
Switch off the electronic images. Ignore the media burlesque. The endless political shows, which turn presidential campaigns into mind-numbing, two-year-long marathons, are entertainment. Do not trust anyone in power. We will save ourselves by building mass movements to overthrow corporate power. I am not certain we will succeed. But I am certain that if we fail, we are doomed.
....
Coal, Oil and Gas supplies worldwide have peaked and are entering decline. The complex world economies will follow this downtrend into increasing contraction. All alternative energy will never be scaled up to anything close to a level that could mitigate societies downfall due to diminishing hydrocarbon availability. Mass unrest/protest will become more prevalent and human migrations will grow ever larger as peoples lives fall apart and they try to seek better conditions. All of the ongoing converging catastrophes, myriad in scope, will overwhelm human systems with compounding negative impacts. The growing conflicts between the masses and the elites will become ever more brutal.
Tuesday, August 13, 2019
Monday, August 12, 2019
SC195-1
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/52079.htm
Criminal Embargos: Venezuela and Iran in the Crosshairs of Murderers Inc – Who is Next?
Imagine just for a moment, the World would stand up in unison, sick and tired of the aggressive killer arrogance of the United States and her vassals – and their joint war-force called NATO – and this World, our World, what’s left of it when you deduct Washington and its Brussels allies, would at once block every shipment of everything destined for the ports of the United States of America; every sea port, airport and road port. Hermetically. Nothing would enter. Nothing, no food, no medicine, no electronics, no cars – no nothing. And nothing could leave. No exports, no petrol, no grains, no meat, no pharmaceuticals and foremost, no weapons. Nothing.
And now, take your mind a step further – and imagine the same – exactly the same, a total and full blockage of Israel – nothing would enter, no food, no fuel, no medication, no machinery and especially no weapons – and nothing would leave; a full and total blockage.
This would of course be totally illegal; illegal and unacceptable, by any international law, by the standards of the UN Charter, by the Human Rights Laws and Directives – by any ethical values of human morals. Wouldn’t it? – Yet, this is exactly what these countries are doing, have been doing for decades, sanctioning to strangle and murder entire populations into death or submission. The US with Cuba; Israel with Palestine. And the coercion and strangulation go on, unabated.
The longest embargo – illegal, inhuman and outright criminal – Washington imposed on Cuba – 60 years. Because Cuba has chosen socialism as her form of state and government. Cuba survived and will never give in to the tyrant of the north.
Now the US is expanding her palette of killing by impunity to dominate and subjugate nation after nation which they do not consider bending sufficiently to the dictate of their masters. Venezuela has been targeted for two decades, ever since former President Hugo Chavez was democratically elected in 1998; and Iran, ever since the US-imposed Shah was deposed in 1979 – exactly 40 years ago – by Iran’s Islamic Revolution. Both Venezuela and Iran are rich in natural resources, especially hydrocarbons but also in gold, rare earths and other precious metals and stones.
Contrary to what one would like to imagine, international world bodies, like the United Nations and her sister and associated organizations remain just about silent. When a high-level official utters some benign criticism of the US or Israel – it flairs up for a moment in the ‘news’, then it disappears again, as if it never happened. And indeed, nothing happens. They – the US and Israel – go on with their crimes with impunity.
The latest is an open declaration of economic warfare by Washington, a total embargo on Venezuela; the embargo is now being turned into a naval blockade. Similar steps are to be taken for Iran. That literally means that no merchandise – no matter how vital for survival, like food and medication, is allowed into Venezuela. Three days ago, the US seized, totally illegally, a cargo ship attempting to deliver food and medication to Venezuela – in the Panama Canal, territory which the US does not own or control anymore.
The ship was carrying soy cakes, from which Venezuela was to produce food. Never mind, that the cargoes are fully paid for by Venezuela. And this seems to be just the beginning. Vessels leaving Venezuela with petrol deliveries to client countries are also targeted for blockage, thus confiscating, or rather stealing, Venezuela’s main source of income on which she intends to survive and feed and provide health care for her people. This, in addition to the more than 130 billion dollars total Venezuelan assets confiscated – stolen – by the US worldwide.
And nobody says beep. Almost. Yes, there are some collective protests by countries in solidarity – like key members of the Sao Paulo Forum, as well as more than 60 members of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM – total 120 members) that have become especially active in recent years in defense of Venezuela within the United Nations. Protests and protest declarations also take place by ALBA members, a Latin American trade alliance (ALBA – Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America, 11 members [Venezuela, Cuba, Bolivia, Nicaragua, Dominica, Ecuador, Antigua and Barbuda, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Saint Lucia, Grenada and the Federation of Saint Kitts and Nevis]).
But most interesting are the hypocrites, those who write and scream that Venezuelans are starving to death, that the Maduro government neglects its people – yet these accusers-in-falsehood – let the US and her vassals strangle Venezuela and steal her foreign assets, including foreign reserves and gold, food and medical imports – they are saying zilch, nada, nothing. Just watching.
To top it all off, the Human Rights Commissioner, Madame Michelle Bachelet, Hypocrite-in-chief, who recently visited Venezuela, at the invitation of President Nicolas Maduro, on a Human Rights mission, and who delivered a devastating report about Venezuela’s HR, full of lies, half-truths and outright omissions, not mentioning with one word the US inspired coup attempts, the US-funded opposition and its bloody atrocities perpetrated on the Chavista population, and the strangulating and starving by the US and US-dictated European sanctions – Madame Bachelet now came forward condemning the naval blockade. Great. But she did not stand up against the deadly embargo by the US and the European Union. – What credibility remains for the Human Rights Commission? – The world can see it – it’s all bought, coerced into submission, like so many other UN agencies by the Murderers Inc.
If we are not careful, they are soon going to rule the globe. Thank god, for Russia and China – which are also subjects of US-EU sanctioning and targeted for take-over. But they are a tiny little bit too big and too strong for this sort of games by the decaying US empire and her obedient rats on the sinking ship.
Similarly, the European Union – despots as they have been for hundreds of years as colonialists in Africa, Asia and Latin America – and continue in a modern colonial role through economic control of much of Africa – this very EU, has been sanctioning Venezuela for years on the orders of Washington, naturally, who else? – Now they condemn the naval blockade, but continue their routine sanctions regime.
According to a study carried out by the Washington DC based Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR), under guidance of Mark Weisbrot, CEPR co-director and Jeffrey Sachs, economics professor, Director, Center for Sustainable Development, Columbia University, New York, US and EU sanctions have cost some 40,000 Venezuelan lives. This mainly since August 2017, when Washington escalated its unilateral coercive measures against Venezuela and her state oil company, PDVSA, cutting them off international financial markets.
Yes, the world would have plenty of reasons to stand up and dish out similar naval and air blockades against the US and Israel. Just as a teaser to begin with, and if that doesn’t send a strong enough wake-up message, perhaps such embargoes should be considered on a longer-term indefinite scale. It’s illegal. But we are living in a world where international laws don’t count – where laws are made, as we go, by the self-declared hegemon, the US of A, and her symbiotic Middle East ally, Israel. – So, why not nudging the legal, moral and ethical order back into balance?
Criminal Embargos: Venezuela and Iran in the Crosshairs of Murderers Inc – Who is Next?
Imagine just for a moment, the World would stand up in unison, sick and tired of the aggressive killer arrogance of the United States and her vassals – and their joint war-force called NATO – and this World, our World, what’s left of it when you deduct Washington and its Brussels allies, would at once block every shipment of everything destined for the ports of the United States of America; every sea port, airport and road port. Hermetically. Nothing would enter. Nothing, no food, no medicine, no electronics, no cars – no nothing. And nothing could leave. No exports, no petrol, no grains, no meat, no pharmaceuticals and foremost, no weapons. Nothing.
And now, take your mind a step further – and imagine the same – exactly the same, a total and full blockage of Israel – nothing would enter, no food, no fuel, no medication, no machinery and especially no weapons – and nothing would leave; a full and total blockage.
This would of course be totally illegal; illegal and unacceptable, by any international law, by the standards of the UN Charter, by the Human Rights Laws and Directives – by any ethical values of human morals. Wouldn’t it? – Yet, this is exactly what these countries are doing, have been doing for decades, sanctioning to strangle and murder entire populations into death or submission. The US with Cuba; Israel with Palestine. And the coercion and strangulation go on, unabated.
The longest embargo – illegal, inhuman and outright criminal – Washington imposed on Cuba – 60 years. Because Cuba has chosen socialism as her form of state and government. Cuba survived and will never give in to the tyrant of the north.
Now the US is expanding her palette of killing by impunity to dominate and subjugate nation after nation which they do not consider bending sufficiently to the dictate of their masters. Venezuela has been targeted for two decades, ever since former President Hugo Chavez was democratically elected in 1998; and Iran, ever since the US-imposed Shah was deposed in 1979 – exactly 40 years ago – by Iran’s Islamic Revolution. Both Venezuela and Iran are rich in natural resources, especially hydrocarbons but also in gold, rare earths and other precious metals and stones.
Contrary to what one would like to imagine, international world bodies, like the United Nations and her sister and associated organizations remain just about silent. When a high-level official utters some benign criticism of the US or Israel – it flairs up for a moment in the ‘news’, then it disappears again, as if it never happened. And indeed, nothing happens. They – the US and Israel – go on with their crimes with impunity.
The latest is an open declaration of economic warfare by Washington, a total embargo on Venezuela; the embargo is now being turned into a naval blockade. Similar steps are to be taken for Iran. That literally means that no merchandise – no matter how vital for survival, like food and medication, is allowed into Venezuela. Three days ago, the US seized, totally illegally, a cargo ship attempting to deliver food and medication to Venezuela – in the Panama Canal, territory which the US does not own or control anymore.
The ship was carrying soy cakes, from which Venezuela was to produce food. Never mind, that the cargoes are fully paid for by Venezuela. And this seems to be just the beginning. Vessels leaving Venezuela with petrol deliveries to client countries are also targeted for blockage, thus confiscating, or rather stealing, Venezuela’s main source of income on which she intends to survive and feed and provide health care for her people. This, in addition to the more than 130 billion dollars total Venezuelan assets confiscated – stolen – by the US worldwide.
And nobody says beep. Almost. Yes, there are some collective protests by countries in solidarity – like key members of the Sao Paulo Forum, as well as more than 60 members of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM – total 120 members) that have become especially active in recent years in defense of Venezuela within the United Nations. Protests and protest declarations also take place by ALBA members, a Latin American trade alliance (ALBA – Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America, 11 members [Venezuela, Cuba, Bolivia, Nicaragua, Dominica, Ecuador, Antigua and Barbuda, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Saint Lucia, Grenada and the Federation of Saint Kitts and Nevis]).
But most interesting are the hypocrites, those who write and scream that Venezuelans are starving to death, that the Maduro government neglects its people – yet these accusers-in-falsehood – let the US and her vassals strangle Venezuela and steal her foreign assets, including foreign reserves and gold, food and medical imports – they are saying zilch, nada, nothing. Just watching.
To top it all off, the Human Rights Commissioner, Madame Michelle Bachelet, Hypocrite-in-chief, who recently visited Venezuela, at the invitation of President Nicolas Maduro, on a Human Rights mission, and who delivered a devastating report about Venezuela’s HR, full of lies, half-truths and outright omissions, not mentioning with one word the US inspired coup attempts, the US-funded opposition and its bloody atrocities perpetrated on the Chavista population, and the strangulating and starving by the US and US-dictated European sanctions – Madame Bachelet now came forward condemning the naval blockade. Great. But she did not stand up against the deadly embargo by the US and the European Union. – What credibility remains for the Human Rights Commission? – The world can see it – it’s all bought, coerced into submission, like so many other UN agencies by the Murderers Inc.
If we are not careful, they are soon going to rule the globe. Thank god, for Russia and China – which are also subjects of US-EU sanctioning and targeted for take-over. But they are a tiny little bit too big and too strong for this sort of games by the decaying US empire and her obedient rats on the sinking ship.
Similarly, the European Union – despots as they have been for hundreds of years as colonialists in Africa, Asia and Latin America – and continue in a modern colonial role through economic control of much of Africa – this very EU, has been sanctioning Venezuela for years on the orders of Washington, naturally, who else? – Now they condemn the naval blockade, but continue their routine sanctions regime.
According to a study carried out by the Washington DC based Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR), under guidance of Mark Weisbrot, CEPR co-director and Jeffrey Sachs, economics professor, Director, Center for Sustainable Development, Columbia University, New York, US and EU sanctions have cost some 40,000 Venezuelan lives. This mainly since August 2017, when Washington escalated its unilateral coercive measures against Venezuela and her state oil company, PDVSA, cutting them off international financial markets.
Yes, the world would have plenty of reasons to stand up and dish out similar naval and air blockades against the US and Israel. Just as a teaser to begin with, and if that doesn’t send a strong enough wake-up message, perhaps such embargoes should be considered on a longer-term indefinite scale. It’s illegal. But we are living in a world where international laws don’t count – where laws are made, as we go, by the self-declared hegemon, the US of A, and her symbiotic Middle East ally, Israel. – So, why not nudging the legal, moral and ethical order back into balance?
Sunday, August 11, 2019
SC194-15
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/52082.htm
Bodies on The Ground And The Rise And Rise Of The Economic Elite
The US is less of a nation than a collective, psychotic episode.
Within day to day life in the nation, a cultural aura exists that shifts, mingles, and merges between a sense of nervous agitation and displaced rage, in combination with a sense of weightlessness. The fragmented quality of daily life imparts an insubstantial, unreal quality wherein the citizenry of the capitalist/consumer empire of hungry ghosts drift through a nadascape comprised of ad hoc, fast-buck-driven, suburban/exburban architecture and the ersatz eros of constant, consumer come-ons.
Yet beneath the nebulous dread and nettling angst of it all, there exists the primal human imperative for connection and social communion i.e., authentic eros. The most lost among the lost in the ghostsphere of the collective mind attempt to animate the realm of shades with libations of blood. The gods of the capitalist death cult demand no less.
Where does an impulse to possess an unlimited number of firearms fit into the scheme of things? A firearm’s heft, for one. The weapon feel substantial when held and hoisted thus serves, provisionally, to mitigate a psychical sense of weightlessness. The act of engagement eases nervous agitation. Guns reality is antithetically to the weightless content of media reality. Focus is achieved when one aligns the weapon’s site to a target. Nebulous dread transforms into adamantine purpose. The presence of an Angel Of Death will focus the mind. The ground, for the moment, feels solid beneath one’s feet. Hence, there arrives a craving, in the sense of addiction, to hoard the object that provides relief; in addition, massive quantities of ammunition must be stored as emotional ballast. The mystifying, rankling, uncontrollable criteria of this weightless Age and the white noise of uncertainty seem to yield to the clear and decisive crack of a rifle shot. Relief is imagined in the concomitant carnage. Rebecca West captures the phenomenon in prose:
“Only part of us is sane: only part of us loves pleasure and the longer day of happiness, wants to live to our nineties and die in peace, in a house that we built, that shall shelter those who come after us. The other half of us is nearly mad. It prefers the disagreeable to the agreeable, loves pain and its darker night despair, and wants to die in a catastrophe that will set back life to its beginnings and leave nothing of our house save its blackened foundations.”
―Rebecca West, Black Lamb and Grey Falcon
Because we, on a personal level, in most cases, choose the primary option, our hidden, shadow half will live out the latter on a collective basis. During the blood lust on display at Trump rallies, the mob finds a collective comfort zone in catastrophic longings. The domestic landscape of paranoia works in behalf of the profiteers of perpetual war, perpetrators of the U.S.-created deathscapes overseas, and vice versa, in a self-resonating feedback loop of carnage.
In our era, in which, the US empire is in decline, as a consequence, the White supremacist order no longer seems inevitable, Trump’s frightened legions have personalised the decline. In their gut, they feel as if their identity is under siege. Seal off the nation’s borders. Construct an unscalable wall. Create a cordon sanitaire to protect and preserve racial purity. A strong authority figure is craved in order to set the world back in order. The phenomenon could be termed, Authoritarian Simpatico Syndrome (ASS) -- a pathology manifested in personality types who have been traumatized by the authoritarianism of the US socio-political milieu but who seek to assuage their hurt and humiliation by identification with the very forces responsible for their torment.. The stuff of a cultural nervous breakdown.
To that end, according to its own laws, the nation's citizenry, sufferers of mental distress, should be restricted from purchasing a gun. Yet without a doubt, the most disturbed of all are the nation’s political class, those responsible for gun legislation. There is compelling evidence that they present a clear and present danger to themselves and others. The political class is a menace to society; they make decisions, more often than not, based on delusional thinking, that are responsible for harm on a massive scale. Thus they should be subject to institutional-style restraint, within the confines of the most heavily secure, lockdown ward in an asylum for the criminally insane.
Although the so-called mentally ill, as a rule, are not any more inclined to commit violent crimes than are the general population of capitalist dystopias. The US nation was founded in genocidal violence and the fortunes of its ruling class’ are protected by the state sanctioned violence of the police and are bloated by the violence inherent to imperialist shakedown operations.
It comes down to this: In our emotionally brutal era, those deemed mentally ill are suffering from capitalism. The pummelling stress and boot-in-the-face, hierarchy-inflicted humiliations inherent to the system inflict trauma on large swathes of the citizenry.
Epidemic levels of middle age, US citizen’s are dying with needles in their arms. The inherent and internalised White supremacy of the societal order has been exacerbated by Trump’s self-serving, reckless agitprop and acts in a drug-like manner causing dopamine levels to rise in those experiencing emotional torment due to humiliation-caused despair. Demagogues such as Trump are aware and exploit the manner despair can be palliatively mitigated by the emotional displacement of rage.
Fascist insignias rise when the hopes and aspirations of the working class lay shattered across a capitalist economic wasteland. Hoisted torches provide the illusion that dark despair has been banished. The fascist mob becomes possessed by a belief that they, en masse, can ascend into the precincts of heaven by scaling a mountain of corpses comprised of outsider groups.
Fascism not only acts as anaesthetic to the wounds delivered by capitalism, it is a psychoactive drug because incantatory rhetoric and imagist psychical material get those susceptible to its crude allure high.
Capitalism is borne on manic wings. The economic elite move from corporate skyscrapers and high rise rooftops in order to travel by helicopter, where upon landing, they board private, luxury jets, then, whereupon landing again, they are transported by helicopter to corporate skyscrapers and high rise rooftops. Touching the earth is a fleeting experience. The ruling class have lost touch with ground level verities. In a classical sense, such displays of hubris were understood as the progenitor of madness. The gods first elevate those they drive mad.
And, yes, race-based fears and animus are in play. Racism engendered mass murder has been coming to pass since armed Europeans trudged ashore in the Americas, with their blood-sodden religion and their murderous craving for gold and land. Of course, the racist demagoguery of the Bloated Orange Tub Of Nazi Goo oozing into and agitating the limbic systems of violent cretins during homegrown Nuremberg Rallies and his compulsion to blitzkrieg the pixel-sphere with Der Stürmer tweets is fomenting racist mayhem that includes bacchanals of blood. US mythos is rancid with the reek of the corpses of the innocent slaughtered by White men brandishing firearms. Mass murderers have been and continue to be enshrined as heroes, from Wounded Knee to Afghanistan.
The nation was established by gun-enabled genocide and the intimidation of African slaves held at gunpoint on capitalist plantations. The truth has never been faced e.g., the suppression of the Nixon tape in which Ronald Reagan displayed his racist mindset.
The US citizenry thanks the soldiers of its racist wars of aggression for their “service.” Perpetual shooting sprees origins can be traced to the heart of darkness of the nation and its concomitant White supremacist creed. The killings happened long before the rise and election of the Tangerine Tweet Führer. Of course, the racist shit-heel Trump has exacerbated the situation. He deserves all scorn cast his way. It is obvious his capacity for malice does not possess a governor’s switch.
Trump is a two-legged emblem of the hypertrophy at play in late US imperium. Gun-inflicted violence is steeped into the blood-stained fabric of the US (sham) republic. Withal, Trump is not an anomaly; he is an emblem. Gun-strokers are no more going to shed their mythos than liberals and progressives are going to shed theirs that the US is a democratic republic, governed by the rule of law, and progressive reforms will be implemented by its High Dollar owned and controlled political class that will serve to turn around the trajectory of the blood-built and maintained US empire.
Bodies on The Ground And The Rise And Rise Of The Economic Elite
The US is less of a nation than a collective, psychotic episode.
Within day to day life in the nation, a cultural aura exists that shifts, mingles, and merges between a sense of nervous agitation and displaced rage, in combination with a sense of weightlessness. The fragmented quality of daily life imparts an insubstantial, unreal quality wherein the citizenry of the capitalist/consumer empire of hungry ghosts drift through a nadascape comprised of ad hoc, fast-buck-driven, suburban/exburban architecture and the ersatz eros of constant, consumer come-ons.
Yet beneath the nebulous dread and nettling angst of it all, there exists the primal human imperative for connection and social communion i.e., authentic eros. The most lost among the lost in the ghostsphere of the collective mind attempt to animate the realm of shades with libations of blood. The gods of the capitalist death cult demand no less.
Where does an impulse to possess an unlimited number of firearms fit into the scheme of things? A firearm’s heft, for one. The weapon feel substantial when held and hoisted thus serves, provisionally, to mitigate a psychical sense of weightlessness. The act of engagement eases nervous agitation. Guns reality is antithetically to the weightless content of media reality. Focus is achieved when one aligns the weapon’s site to a target. Nebulous dread transforms into adamantine purpose. The presence of an Angel Of Death will focus the mind. The ground, for the moment, feels solid beneath one’s feet. Hence, there arrives a craving, in the sense of addiction, to hoard the object that provides relief; in addition, massive quantities of ammunition must be stored as emotional ballast. The mystifying, rankling, uncontrollable criteria of this weightless Age and the white noise of uncertainty seem to yield to the clear and decisive crack of a rifle shot. Relief is imagined in the concomitant carnage. Rebecca West captures the phenomenon in prose:
“Only part of us is sane: only part of us loves pleasure and the longer day of happiness, wants to live to our nineties and die in peace, in a house that we built, that shall shelter those who come after us. The other half of us is nearly mad. It prefers the disagreeable to the agreeable, loves pain and its darker night despair, and wants to die in a catastrophe that will set back life to its beginnings and leave nothing of our house save its blackened foundations.”
―Rebecca West, Black Lamb and Grey Falcon
Because we, on a personal level, in most cases, choose the primary option, our hidden, shadow half will live out the latter on a collective basis. During the blood lust on display at Trump rallies, the mob finds a collective comfort zone in catastrophic longings. The domestic landscape of paranoia works in behalf of the profiteers of perpetual war, perpetrators of the U.S.-created deathscapes overseas, and vice versa, in a self-resonating feedback loop of carnage.
In our era, in which, the US empire is in decline, as a consequence, the White supremacist order no longer seems inevitable, Trump’s frightened legions have personalised the decline. In their gut, they feel as if their identity is under siege. Seal off the nation’s borders. Construct an unscalable wall. Create a cordon sanitaire to protect and preserve racial purity. A strong authority figure is craved in order to set the world back in order. The phenomenon could be termed, Authoritarian Simpatico Syndrome (ASS) -- a pathology manifested in personality types who have been traumatized by the authoritarianism of the US socio-political milieu but who seek to assuage their hurt and humiliation by identification with the very forces responsible for their torment.. The stuff of a cultural nervous breakdown.
To that end, according to its own laws, the nation's citizenry, sufferers of mental distress, should be restricted from purchasing a gun. Yet without a doubt, the most disturbed of all are the nation’s political class, those responsible for gun legislation. There is compelling evidence that they present a clear and present danger to themselves and others. The political class is a menace to society; they make decisions, more often than not, based on delusional thinking, that are responsible for harm on a massive scale. Thus they should be subject to institutional-style restraint, within the confines of the most heavily secure, lockdown ward in an asylum for the criminally insane.
Although the so-called mentally ill, as a rule, are not any more inclined to commit violent crimes than are the general population of capitalist dystopias. The US nation was founded in genocidal violence and the fortunes of its ruling class’ are protected by the state sanctioned violence of the police and are bloated by the violence inherent to imperialist shakedown operations.
It comes down to this: In our emotionally brutal era, those deemed mentally ill are suffering from capitalism. The pummelling stress and boot-in-the-face, hierarchy-inflicted humiliations inherent to the system inflict trauma on large swathes of the citizenry.
Epidemic levels of middle age, US citizen’s are dying with needles in their arms. The inherent and internalised White supremacy of the societal order has been exacerbated by Trump’s self-serving, reckless agitprop and acts in a drug-like manner causing dopamine levels to rise in those experiencing emotional torment due to humiliation-caused despair. Demagogues such as Trump are aware and exploit the manner despair can be palliatively mitigated by the emotional displacement of rage.
Fascist insignias rise when the hopes and aspirations of the working class lay shattered across a capitalist economic wasteland. Hoisted torches provide the illusion that dark despair has been banished. The fascist mob becomes possessed by a belief that they, en masse, can ascend into the precincts of heaven by scaling a mountain of corpses comprised of outsider groups.
Fascism not only acts as anaesthetic to the wounds delivered by capitalism, it is a psychoactive drug because incantatory rhetoric and imagist psychical material get those susceptible to its crude allure high.
Capitalism is borne on manic wings. The economic elite move from corporate skyscrapers and high rise rooftops in order to travel by helicopter, where upon landing, they board private, luxury jets, then, whereupon landing again, they are transported by helicopter to corporate skyscrapers and high rise rooftops. Touching the earth is a fleeting experience. The ruling class have lost touch with ground level verities. In a classical sense, such displays of hubris were understood as the progenitor of madness. The gods first elevate those they drive mad.
And, yes, race-based fears and animus are in play. Racism engendered mass murder has been coming to pass since armed Europeans trudged ashore in the Americas, with their blood-sodden religion and their murderous craving for gold and land. Of course, the racist demagoguery of the Bloated Orange Tub Of Nazi Goo oozing into and agitating the limbic systems of violent cretins during homegrown Nuremberg Rallies and his compulsion to blitzkrieg the pixel-sphere with Der Stürmer tweets is fomenting racist mayhem that includes bacchanals of blood. US mythos is rancid with the reek of the corpses of the innocent slaughtered by White men brandishing firearms. Mass murderers have been and continue to be enshrined as heroes, from Wounded Knee to Afghanistan.
The nation was established by gun-enabled genocide and the intimidation of African slaves held at gunpoint on capitalist plantations. The truth has never been faced e.g., the suppression of the Nixon tape in which Ronald Reagan displayed his racist mindset.
The US citizenry thanks the soldiers of its racist wars of aggression for their “service.” Perpetual shooting sprees origins can be traced to the heart of darkness of the nation and its concomitant White supremacist creed. The killings happened long before the rise and election of the Tangerine Tweet Führer. Of course, the racist shit-heel Trump has exacerbated the situation. He deserves all scorn cast his way. It is obvious his capacity for malice does not possess a governor’s switch.
Trump is a two-legged emblem of the hypertrophy at play in late US imperium. Gun-inflicted violence is steeped into the blood-stained fabric of the US (sham) republic. Withal, Trump is not an anomaly; he is an emblem. Gun-strokers are no more going to shed their mythos than liberals and progressives are going to shed theirs that the US is a democratic republic, governed by the rule of law, and progressive reforms will be implemented by its High Dollar owned and controlled political class that will serve to turn around the trajectory of the blood-built and maintained US empire.
Saturday, August 10, 2019
SC194-14
https://www.peakprosperity.com/the-hard-truth/
The Hard Truth
Why hard assets are so important given the current state of global markets
It’s very easy to get sucked into the mini dramas playing out across our digital screens.
Trump Tweeted this while the stock market did that. Uh oh! Somebody’s experiencing something awful, or having a stroke of great fortune. Hey, look: Kittens!
Watching CNN often feels like the inept product of a university committee that sought to create a program of sensitivity training for adult sufferers of acute ADHD. After just five minutes you know what it’s like to be trapped in a brain that’s distracted part way through every thought pattern and cannot maintain enough attention to form a coherent sequitur.
However, if we set these entirely useless distractions aside it’s quite apparent that something big is going on. And it’s not positive.
It’s a complex story with lots of moving pieces and it takes a bit of effort to puzzle it all out, but more and more people are arriving at the same conclusion; something is going to break.
To resolve the dots into a coherent picture, we need to take two giant steps back and take in the whole canvas.
The cliff notes version is this: The numbers just don’t add up.
Big changes are underway. Specifically, the unsustainable cogs in the global economy are slowly grinding to a halt.
Giant Step #1: Growth
The age of unrestricted growth is over. It was a good run. But now we’ve got to live within certain ecological and resource budgets which means we’ve also got to live within some fiscal and economic budgets.
Virtually nobody in power wants to do either. Maybe a few here and there, most of them recently retired or close to it. The remainder all want business-as-usual (BAU) to continue, especially those that just hooked a finger around the brass ring of success.
The big problem with BAU is that it’s a broken model without a future. Economic growth was the solution to every problem. Now it is the problem.
Worst of all, it’s not just growth we’ve become addicted to, but exponential growth. For a quick and powerful review of this vital concept, please watch this video. It’s less than 5 minutes. Fair warning, you might not be the same afterwards:
There are a hundred exponential charts we could discuss, and they are all important in their own right, but there’s one that stands far above them all.
It’s so prevalent in your life that you probably take it for granted and might not appreciate all that it provides. You are the fish and it is the water.
Here it is:
fossil fuel use chart
Fossil fuel energy is responsible for providing every creature comfort and material abundance in your life and it’s has been growing exponentially for your entire life.
Here’s the brain buster. Squint at that chart carefully and you’ll see that fully half of all the fossil fuels ever burned throughout all of history have been burned since 1990.
Which means that if you are 29 years old, you’ve been alive when half of all the fossil fuels ever burned throughout all of human history have been burned. Half! In just 29 years!
If that doesn’t shock you, then I need you to re-read it and think about it some more, because it’s a really profound insight. Especially once I connect it to the second giant step below.
Here’s another idea. What if we converted the fossil fuel energy we consume into human slaves? That is, the amount of work that a fit human could provide if they were digging ditches or crushing stones or hauling a cart, except it’s the fossil fuel providing the work energy.
By this method we discover that each year’s fossil fuel use is equivalent to 500 billion human energy slaves working to keep our houses cooled, food on the table, and moving ourselves and our innumerable goods about the face of the planet.
With only 7.8 billion people on the planet that’s as if there were 64 human energy slaves per person. Given that those slaves are not evenly distributed it’s more like people in rich countries have several hundred energy slaves each. It makes life very easy and sweet.
If or when your energy slaves go away, life will become a lot more difficult, but not in any ways that would be remarkable to your great grandparents.
When it comes to oil the data is even more surprising. To have been alive when half of all the oil ever used throughout all of human history you only need to be 22 years old. 22!
In just the past 22 years, as much oil energy as used throughout human history has been used. It’s moved your personal vehicle, massive container ships and airplanes. It’s dug up vast mineral ore deposits and installed wind towers, as well as spread plastic throughout the oceans. It’s trawled, and cut and scraped and plowed the dwindling natural habitats.
It’s very difficult to overstate just how much material abundance it has brought to the world. “All of it” would be closest to the truth. Water to a fish.
Ask yourself, now – how long will it be before another volume equal to all of that ever burned throughout history will be consumed? That is, how long before the next doubling – another half equal to the last half?
At current rates, that would be just another 21 years.
Weird, eh? But it’s how it works. It’s the miracle of compounding. Each doubling consumes as much as all the prior ones before it. This is awesome when it works for you in a portfolio, sneaky and treacherous when it’s working against you as it has for the actuarially deficient pension plans.
Einstein called compounding “the eighth wonder of the world” and said that “He who understands it, earns it; he who doesn’t, pays it.”
I know that energy extraction is complex arena and I’m not asking you to become a world-class petroleum or coal geologist or anything – but merely to use your intuition.
How many more doublings do you think we’ve got? One more? Can we manage to find and burn another amount of coal, oil and natural gas equal to all that has come before? Even if your intuition says that we’ve got one more doubling, or possibly two, you know there’s a hard limit in there somewhere.
Sooner or later there’s a limit to the exponential extraction and use of fossil fuels. Someday it just becomes too difficult to extract the remaining dregs and dribbles at a faster pace. That’s when the peak occurs. Then everything we take for granted changes. The water drains from our tank. We will rather suddenly become acutely aware of the water’s absence.
That day is not as far off as you might imagine. A decade, perhaps two.
With this one giant step back so much becomes clear about the future and what it can, and what it cannot, offer. One thing we cannot assume any longer, is an endless horizon of exponential growth in energy extraction. With that one insight, literally everything about investments and economic growth suddenly changes.
If you have money invested in the markets, and you care about the future, the next step is going to really matter to you a lot.
Giant Step #2: The Economy & Energy
Economic growth depends on energy.
It is this concept, more than any other, that serves to cast light on the future.
Out of all the economic charts and data I have, and I have a lot, this next one is the most robust, rock-solid of them all. It shows that economic growth (GDP) and growth in energy consumption over the past 50 years have been tightly coupled.
See how nice and straight that line is? See how the data points all fall neatly on or about the straight red trend line?
That tells us there’s a very tight relationship between global economic activity and global energy consumption. The units can be defined.
If you want (expect, require, are counting on…) X-units of economic growth then you’re going to need Y-units of additional energy consumption.
It’s pretty simple and dead linear. Nothing complicated about it. More economic growth requires more energy use. That’s been true for the past 50 years, and there’s nothing yet anywhere to suggest that this has or will change.
This is a profoundly important concept. It matters to every investor, saver, and citizen who cares about preserving their wealth and leaving behind a world worth inheriting (our mission at Peak Prosperity).
Here’s why. The economy and its enabler, the financial system, are 100% built around the idea of perpetual exponential growth.
Well, as we pointed out above that exponential economic growth is based on energy growth, and that cannot continue forever (or even very much longer).
So the operative question becomes, what happens to the linked economic and financial systems when they cannot grow exponentially anymore?
Nobody really knows but perhaps we got a taste of that back in 2008 when the financial system almost blew to smithereens. The entire banking system almost seized up and ceased to function. They were desperate times. Why?
Simply because credit stopped growing exponentially, for the first time since the 1950’s. That tiny wiggle on the chart below almost wrecked the global financial system.
Really? We have built for ourselves a system of credit and money that is either happy but growing exponentially or it’s collapsing? Those are its two states?
If you’re like me, you find that somewhat troubling.
Connect the Dots
I’m leaving aside all of the profoundly worrying signals from the natural world – the missing insects, the melting ice and a hundred other signs that the age of growth is well and truly over – which is a whole other ‘dot’ to connect here.
For our purposes today it’s sufficient to connect these two dots:
The financial system requires exponential growth
Fossil fuels are finite
Okay, one other point to weave in here. Currency (“money”) and debt are not wealth, they are claims on real wealth.
It’s pretty common to mistake of money & debt as wealth. If you own a billion dollars of US Treasury notes and corporate bonds you are said to be very wealthy.
But what do you really own? Well, you own a billion dollars (plus interest) of claims on the future cash flows of the issuers of the bonds. But the bonds themselves are not real wealth in the sense that you can eat them, live in them, or do anything with them except admire them in your portfolio. We own claims on wealth so we can someday consume or possess actual wealth.
To do anything useful with bonds you have to first convert them to dollars (themselves liabilities of the Federal reserve).
It’s only once you’ve done this that you can then exchange those dollars for the real goods and services that you actually consume, like houses and oil wells and land and gold and food.
And that’s the point. Everything that we popularly call “wealth” (currency, stocks and bonds) are merely claims on the final items containing real value that we wish to own or consume.
Which means there needs to be a balance between the claims and the things. Too few claims and that’s deflation. Too many and that’s inflation.
Well, in this story the Fed, et al., have been fostering the exponential accumulation of claims at roughly 2x the rate of real GDP growth and without any indication of concern for the fact that the earth is, in fact, finite.
Take another look at this chart. The blue line is GDP and it represents the real stuff (the “things” in this story) while the red line represents the claims.
Is it not completely, totally, utterly obvious that the claims are increasing faster than the stuff? The data shows that debts are compounding at 2x the rate of GDP and have been since 1971.
Is that sustainable? Nope. How could it possibly work out? Only if GDP growth comes roaring back and is 2x the pace of debt growth for many decades into the future. How likely is that? Well, let me tell you a story about how energy and the economy are linked…
Constantly increasing debts is an implicit bet on the idea that the future will be larger than the present.
Exponentially larger given the interest involved. The real wealth to justify those claims will show up. Magically. It always has. Unfortunately, Peak-All-Sorts-Of-Things militates against that view.
What I’m saying here is that the commonly held conventional view of the world and the future has got it all wrong. Dangerously and very badly wrong.
The Vital Role of Hard Assets
Okay, you are asking, what’s to be done here? What should you do?
The solution is to understand that human nature has not changed at all in the past 5,000 years. Which means that when confronted with such a major development as I’ve laid out above, the normal human tendency will be to ignore it as long as possible and do some really dumb things to try and prevent reality from intruding on the fantasy.
What have humans done hundreds of times throughout history when their dreams were economically unworkable? They printed, or debased, their money.
Can’t afford a war? Clip the coins! Empire too large? Go into debt! (And then print your way out of your pickle.)
Global economy no longer growing, debts too large, and the claims too many? Quantitative easing (QE)!
Really there’s nothing new under the sun here. Same old, same old.
In every case when the “solution” was printing or its equivalent, fortunes were made and lost, but mostly lost. Claims on wealth were mistaken for actual wealth. When the claims evaporated in various panics the holders were financially ruined.
That’s going to happen again for the same reasons as before, only this time it’s a global phenomenon. There are no borders to scurry across and hide out while things blow over.
Seen from a comfortable distance what actually happens during these times is a wealth transfer. From those who don‘t see it coming to those who do. Broadly speaking, from those clinging onto the claims on wealth towards those who hold the actual wealth.
This is where hard assets come in.
The real wealth, again, are the real things that either are the source of real wealth (farmland, oil wells, mines, timberlands, etc.) or are the tangible things that come from those assets. Gold, silver, lithium, copper, lumber, cash flowing real estate and the like.
By far the simplest and easiest thing you can do, as a starting point, is to have a portion of your wealth safely tucked into gold and silver.
By the way, the big, smart money has already started this process which means you’d better get moving if you want to join that parade. There may well come a day when the big money floods in that direction and then – good luck finding any to buy!
Here’s some data for you. For a variety of reasons too numerous to go into here, the world’s central banks are too far down the QE rabbit hole to do anything but print and then print some more! This has resulted in over $15 trillion of negative yielding debt across the world. That number is exploding and sure to go even higher in the future.
If you were forced to choose between the certain losses of negative yields (which means paying an entity to lend them money) and holding gold, which at least offers a zero yield, which is more attractive?
The answer screams “own gold!” to many investors which explains why this chart of the total amount of negative yielding debt and the price of gold line up so well:
negative yielding debt chart
Do You Love Your Family?
I have three adult children whom I love very much. And while I don’t have any grandchildren yet – and I already love them, too.
And because I do, I own lots of gold and silver.
I’ve taken the time to study history, clear my head of the common narrative that has so many things so desperately wrong. I actively reject the usual anti-gold propaganda that infects the US financial press. It’s a weird position that’s not reflected or repeated anywhere else in the world and I don’t have a good explanation for it.
I’ve taken is as my role to provide them as solid a start as I can, the same as in many other families. And it’s a role I take seriously.
A core position in gold and silver – physical gold and silver, not ETFs or miners – is an essential part of that strategy. It’s the durable insurance fund that a financial fire cannot destroy. If you love your family and you take the role of providing and protecting seriously, gold and silver are a critical “must have” in your holdings.
After that, the next layers involve income-producing real estate (for which we have an excellent webinar series), productive farmland, a resilient homestead, ownership in high-quality mines and energy plays, and other hard assets. What makes sense for you is a complex equation involving your age, financial status, geographical location, family circumstances, etc.
We strongly advise that any money you have in the financial markets, or ““markets”” as we like to call them due to their excessively deformed nature, be managed by people who understand these many risks and actively manage for the future you think is coming. Our endorsed financial advisers at New Harbor will be glad to provide you with a free, no obligation consultation as they have for many hundreds of our readers.
They will help you develop a plan and determine which assets make the most sense to explore and invest in.
Finally, be sure to discuss these powerful and important ideas with those you love and care about. The world is changing, and people will either be prepared for those changes or they will be caught unawares.
This isn’t doom & gloom. It’s just reality.
However, as has been historically true, reality isn’t very popular with the masses. That’s why so much opportunity exists.
To see it, you just have to take two giant steps back to understand the larger picture.
In Part 2: Defending Against The Global Currency Crisis we look in depth at the brewing global currency crisis and how the panicked world central banks will make it worse with their futile and desperate resuce attempts.
The sudden changes in global capital flows that will occur as a result will throw the world into chaos.
And the wealth destruction that is going to ensue will be *much* larger than most analysts and investors can comprehend.
An absolutely essential requirement for preserving wealth during this period will be holding it in forms that cannot be inflated away by a runaway printing press.
....
Check out the graphs at the article address above. Hard assets like various resources, real estate properties, food, farming land, etc will also be subject to being taken by force by others who's situations are much more difficult than yours if you are fortunate enough to have these things. Collapse in its many forms will mean masses of people with lives falling apart, and they will lose as time goes by, in large measure and increasingly so their veneer of civility that was intact to one extent or another in better times. The myriad signs of the great crumbling of the world conditions for humanity are everywhere to be seen.
The Hard Truth
Why hard assets are so important given the current state of global markets
It’s very easy to get sucked into the mini dramas playing out across our digital screens.
Trump Tweeted this while the stock market did that. Uh oh! Somebody’s experiencing something awful, or having a stroke of great fortune. Hey, look: Kittens!
Watching CNN often feels like the inept product of a university committee that sought to create a program of sensitivity training for adult sufferers of acute ADHD. After just five minutes you know what it’s like to be trapped in a brain that’s distracted part way through every thought pattern and cannot maintain enough attention to form a coherent sequitur.
However, if we set these entirely useless distractions aside it’s quite apparent that something big is going on. And it’s not positive.
It’s a complex story with lots of moving pieces and it takes a bit of effort to puzzle it all out, but more and more people are arriving at the same conclusion; something is going to break.
To resolve the dots into a coherent picture, we need to take two giant steps back and take in the whole canvas.
The cliff notes version is this: The numbers just don’t add up.
Big changes are underway. Specifically, the unsustainable cogs in the global economy are slowly grinding to a halt.
Giant Step #1: Growth
The age of unrestricted growth is over. It was a good run. But now we’ve got to live within certain ecological and resource budgets which means we’ve also got to live within some fiscal and economic budgets.
Virtually nobody in power wants to do either. Maybe a few here and there, most of them recently retired or close to it. The remainder all want business-as-usual (BAU) to continue, especially those that just hooked a finger around the brass ring of success.
The big problem with BAU is that it’s a broken model without a future. Economic growth was the solution to every problem. Now it is the problem.
Worst of all, it’s not just growth we’ve become addicted to, but exponential growth. For a quick and powerful review of this vital concept, please watch this video. It’s less than 5 minutes. Fair warning, you might not be the same afterwards:
There are a hundred exponential charts we could discuss, and they are all important in their own right, but there’s one that stands far above them all.
It’s so prevalent in your life that you probably take it for granted and might not appreciate all that it provides. You are the fish and it is the water.
Here it is:
fossil fuel use chart
Fossil fuel energy is responsible for providing every creature comfort and material abundance in your life and it’s has been growing exponentially for your entire life.
Here’s the brain buster. Squint at that chart carefully and you’ll see that fully half of all the fossil fuels ever burned throughout all of history have been burned since 1990.
Which means that if you are 29 years old, you’ve been alive when half of all the fossil fuels ever burned throughout all of human history have been burned. Half! In just 29 years!
If that doesn’t shock you, then I need you to re-read it and think about it some more, because it’s a really profound insight. Especially once I connect it to the second giant step below.
Here’s another idea. What if we converted the fossil fuel energy we consume into human slaves? That is, the amount of work that a fit human could provide if they were digging ditches or crushing stones or hauling a cart, except it’s the fossil fuel providing the work energy.
By this method we discover that each year’s fossil fuel use is equivalent to 500 billion human energy slaves working to keep our houses cooled, food on the table, and moving ourselves and our innumerable goods about the face of the planet.
With only 7.8 billion people on the planet that’s as if there were 64 human energy slaves per person. Given that those slaves are not evenly distributed it’s more like people in rich countries have several hundred energy slaves each. It makes life very easy and sweet.
If or when your energy slaves go away, life will become a lot more difficult, but not in any ways that would be remarkable to your great grandparents.
When it comes to oil the data is even more surprising. To have been alive when half of all the oil ever used throughout all of human history you only need to be 22 years old. 22!
In just the past 22 years, as much oil energy as used throughout human history has been used. It’s moved your personal vehicle, massive container ships and airplanes. It’s dug up vast mineral ore deposits and installed wind towers, as well as spread plastic throughout the oceans. It’s trawled, and cut and scraped and plowed the dwindling natural habitats.
It’s very difficult to overstate just how much material abundance it has brought to the world. “All of it” would be closest to the truth. Water to a fish.
Ask yourself, now – how long will it be before another volume equal to all of that ever burned throughout history will be consumed? That is, how long before the next doubling – another half equal to the last half?
At current rates, that would be just another 21 years.
Weird, eh? But it’s how it works. It’s the miracle of compounding. Each doubling consumes as much as all the prior ones before it. This is awesome when it works for you in a portfolio, sneaky and treacherous when it’s working against you as it has for the actuarially deficient pension plans.
Einstein called compounding “the eighth wonder of the world” and said that “He who understands it, earns it; he who doesn’t, pays it.”
I know that energy extraction is complex arena and I’m not asking you to become a world-class petroleum or coal geologist or anything – but merely to use your intuition.
How many more doublings do you think we’ve got? One more? Can we manage to find and burn another amount of coal, oil and natural gas equal to all that has come before? Even if your intuition says that we’ve got one more doubling, or possibly two, you know there’s a hard limit in there somewhere.
Sooner or later there’s a limit to the exponential extraction and use of fossil fuels. Someday it just becomes too difficult to extract the remaining dregs and dribbles at a faster pace. That’s when the peak occurs. Then everything we take for granted changes. The water drains from our tank. We will rather suddenly become acutely aware of the water’s absence.
That day is not as far off as you might imagine. A decade, perhaps two.
With this one giant step back so much becomes clear about the future and what it can, and what it cannot, offer. One thing we cannot assume any longer, is an endless horizon of exponential growth in energy extraction. With that one insight, literally everything about investments and economic growth suddenly changes.
If you have money invested in the markets, and you care about the future, the next step is going to really matter to you a lot.
Giant Step #2: The Economy & Energy
Economic growth depends on energy.
It is this concept, more than any other, that serves to cast light on the future.
Out of all the economic charts and data I have, and I have a lot, this next one is the most robust, rock-solid of them all. It shows that economic growth (GDP) and growth in energy consumption over the past 50 years have been tightly coupled.
See how nice and straight that line is? See how the data points all fall neatly on or about the straight red trend line?
That tells us there’s a very tight relationship between global economic activity and global energy consumption. The units can be defined.
If you want (expect, require, are counting on…) X-units of economic growth then you’re going to need Y-units of additional energy consumption.
It’s pretty simple and dead linear. Nothing complicated about it. More economic growth requires more energy use. That’s been true for the past 50 years, and there’s nothing yet anywhere to suggest that this has or will change.
This is a profoundly important concept. It matters to every investor, saver, and citizen who cares about preserving their wealth and leaving behind a world worth inheriting (our mission at Peak Prosperity).
Here’s why. The economy and its enabler, the financial system, are 100% built around the idea of perpetual exponential growth.
Well, as we pointed out above that exponential economic growth is based on energy growth, and that cannot continue forever (or even very much longer).
So the operative question becomes, what happens to the linked economic and financial systems when they cannot grow exponentially anymore?
Nobody really knows but perhaps we got a taste of that back in 2008 when the financial system almost blew to smithereens. The entire banking system almost seized up and ceased to function. They were desperate times. Why?
Simply because credit stopped growing exponentially, for the first time since the 1950’s. That tiny wiggle on the chart below almost wrecked the global financial system.
Really? We have built for ourselves a system of credit and money that is either happy but growing exponentially or it’s collapsing? Those are its two states?
If you’re like me, you find that somewhat troubling.
Connect the Dots
I’m leaving aside all of the profoundly worrying signals from the natural world – the missing insects, the melting ice and a hundred other signs that the age of growth is well and truly over – which is a whole other ‘dot’ to connect here.
For our purposes today it’s sufficient to connect these two dots:
The financial system requires exponential growth
Fossil fuels are finite
Okay, one other point to weave in here. Currency (“money”) and debt are not wealth, they are claims on real wealth.
It’s pretty common to mistake of money & debt as wealth. If you own a billion dollars of US Treasury notes and corporate bonds you are said to be very wealthy.
But what do you really own? Well, you own a billion dollars (plus interest) of claims on the future cash flows of the issuers of the bonds. But the bonds themselves are not real wealth in the sense that you can eat them, live in them, or do anything with them except admire them in your portfolio. We own claims on wealth so we can someday consume or possess actual wealth.
To do anything useful with bonds you have to first convert them to dollars (themselves liabilities of the Federal reserve).
It’s only once you’ve done this that you can then exchange those dollars for the real goods and services that you actually consume, like houses and oil wells and land and gold and food.
And that’s the point. Everything that we popularly call “wealth” (currency, stocks and bonds) are merely claims on the final items containing real value that we wish to own or consume.
Which means there needs to be a balance between the claims and the things. Too few claims and that’s deflation. Too many and that’s inflation.
Well, in this story the Fed, et al., have been fostering the exponential accumulation of claims at roughly 2x the rate of real GDP growth and without any indication of concern for the fact that the earth is, in fact, finite.
Take another look at this chart. The blue line is GDP and it represents the real stuff (the “things” in this story) while the red line represents the claims.
Is it not completely, totally, utterly obvious that the claims are increasing faster than the stuff? The data shows that debts are compounding at 2x the rate of GDP and have been since 1971.
Is that sustainable? Nope. How could it possibly work out? Only if GDP growth comes roaring back and is 2x the pace of debt growth for many decades into the future. How likely is that? Well, let me tell you a story about how energy and the economy are linked…
Constantly increasing debts is an implicit bet on the idea that the future will be larger than the present.
Exponentially larger given the interest involved. The real wealth to justify those claims will show up. Magically. It always has. Unfortunately, Peak-All-Sorts-Of-Things militates against that view.
What I’m saying here is that the commonly held conventional view of the world and the future has got it all wrong. Dangerously and very badly wrong.
The Vital Role of Hard Assets
Okay, you are asking, what’s to be done here? What should you do?
The solution is to understand that human nature has not changed at all in the past 5,000 years. Which means that when confronted with such a major development as I’ve laid out above, the normal human tendency will be to ignore it as long as possible and do some really dumb things to try and prevent reality from intruding on the fantasy.
What have humans done hundreds of times throughout history when their dreams were economically unworkable? They printed, or debased, their money.
Can’t afford a war? Clip the coins! Empire too large? Go into debt! (And then print your way out of your pickle.)
Global economy no longer growing, debts too large, and the claims too many? Quantitative easing (QE)!
Really there’s nothing new under the sun here. Same old, same old.
In every case when the “solution” was printing or its equivalent, fortunes were made and lost, but mostly lost. Claims on wealth were mistaken for actual wealth. When the claims evaporated in various panics the holders were financially ruined.
That’s going to happen again for the same reasons as before, only this time it’s a global phenomenon. There are no borders to scurry across and hide out while things blow over.
Seen from a comfortable distance what actually happens during these times is a wealth transfer. From those who don‘t see it coming to those who do. Broadly speaking, from those clinging onto the claims on wealth towards those who hold the actual wealth.
This is where hard assets come in.
The real wealth, again, are the real things that either are the source of real wealth (farmland, oil wells, mines, timberlands, etc.) or are the tangible things that come from those assets. Gold, silver, lithium, copper, lumber, cash flowing real estate and the like.
By far the simplest and easiest thing you can do, as a starting point, is to have a portion of your wealth safely tucked into gold and silver.
By the way, the big, smart money has already started this process which means you’d better get moving if you want to join that parade. There may well come a day when the big money floods in that direction and then – good luck finding any to buy!
Here’s some data for you. For a variety of reasons too numerous to go into here, the world’s central banks are too far down the QE rabbit hole to do anything but print and then print some more! This has resulted in over $15 trillion of negative yielding debt across the world. That number is exploding and sure to go even higher in the future.
If you were forced to choose between the certain losses of negative yields (which means paying an entity to lend them money) and holding gold, which at least offers a zero yield, which is more attractive?
The answer screams “own gold!” to many investors which explains why this chart of the total amount of negative yielding debt and the price of gold line up so well:
negative yielding debt chart
Do You Love Your Family?
I have three adult children whom I love very much. And while I don’t have any grandchildren yet – and I already love them, too.
And because I do, I own lots of gold and silver.
I’ve taken the time to study history, clear my head of the common narrative that has so many things so desperately wrong. I actively reject the usual anti-gold propaganda that infects the US financial press. It’s a weird position that’s not reflected or repeated anywhere else in the world and I don’t have a good explanation for it.
I’ve taken is as my role to provide them as solid a start as I can, the same as in many other families. And it’s a role I take seriously.
A core position in gold and silver – physical gold and silver, not ETFs or miners – is an essential part of that strategy. It’s the durable insurance fund that a financial fire cannot destroy. If you love your family and you take the role of providing and protecting seriously, gold and silver are a critical “must have” in your holdings.
After that, the next layers involve income-producing real estate (for which we have an excellent webinar series), productive farmland, a resilient homestead, ownership in high-quality mines and energy plays, and other hard assets. What makes sense for you is a complex equation involving your age, financial status, geographical location, family circumstances, etc.
We strongly advise that any money you have in the financial markets, or ““markets”” as we like to call them due to their excessively deformed nature, be managed by people who understand these many risks and actively manage for the future you think is coming. Our endorsed financial advisers at New Harbor will be glad to provide you with a free, no obligation consultation as they have for many hundreds of our readers.
They will help you develop a plan and determine which assets make the most sense to explore and invest in.
Finally, be sure to discuss these powerful and important ideas with those you love and care about. The world is changing, and people will either be prepared for those changes or they will be caught unawares.
This isn’t doom & gloom. It’s just reality.
However, as has been historically true, reality isn’t very popular with the masses. That’s why so much opportunity exists.
To see it, you just have to take two giant steps back to understand the larger picture.
In Part 2: Defending Against The Global Currency Crisis we look in depth at the brewing global currency crisis and how the panicked world central banks will make it worse with their futile and desperate resuce attempts.
The sudden changes in global capital flows that will occur as a result will throw the world into chaos.
And the wealth destruction that is going to ensue will be *much* larger than most analysts and investors can comprehend.
An absolutely essential requirement for preserving wealth during this period will be holding it in forms that cannot be inflated away by a runaway printing press.
....
Check out the graphs at the article address above. Hard assets like various resources, real estate properties, food, farming land, etc will also be subject to being taken by force by others who's situations are much more difficult than yours if you are fortunate enough to have these things. Collapse in its many forms will mean masses of people with lives falling apart, and they will lose as time goes by, in large measure and increasingly so their veneer of civility that was intact to one extent or another in better times. The myriad signs of the great crumbling of the world conditions for humanity are everywhere to be seen.
Friday, August 9, 2019
SC194-13
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/52066.htm
NATO’s China Double-Think
The US-led NATO alliance this week designated a whole new hemisphere to itself for “security” operations. No longer merely an “Atlantic” organization, it’s assuming the role of policing the Pacific. Quite a self-promotion.
NATO’s Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg, speaking during a visit to Australia, talked about "the need" to deploy military forces in Asia-Pacific to counter the "rise of China".
With laughable double-think, Stoltenberg declared: "This is not about moving NATO into the Pacific, but this is about responding to the fact that China is coming closer to us."
Right. So are there Chinese warships patrolling European waterways, or Chinese missile systems being established along America’s borders? No, the Norwegian former prime minister, who is the civilian boss of the US-led military alliance, “rationalized” his claim about China “coming closer to us” with the following alleged “offensive” behaviour.
"[China] Investing heavily in critical infrastructure in Europe, increased presence in the Arctic and also increased presence in Africa, and in cyberspace," he added, as quoted by Reuters.
In other words, in Stoltenberg’s view, China’s legitimate development as an economic power is somehow a malign security threat. How dare China do that!
Never mind that cash-strapped European governments have actually welcomed Chinese capital investment for building new telecoms infrastructure, as have many African nations who view China as a much more viable strategic partner after decades and centuries of US and European exploitation of that continent.
China is, in effect, being criminalized by the NATO talking-head for simply becoming a global economic powerhouse. And in that way, Stoltenberg is showing just how abject a lackey he is to his ultimate bosses in Washington.
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization has always been a euphemism to permit a European cover for American imperialism. Since its formation in 1949, NATO has long been used as a stalking horse for US aggression towards the Soviet Union, and latterly, the Russian Federation. The US-dominated alliance should have been abolished years ago when the Cold War officially ended in 1991. Rather, it has continued to expand, doubling in size to now include some 29 member states.
Now it is expanding its imperialist flunkey-role to target China, in total obeisance to US President Donald Trump’s policy of aggression towards Beijing. Note how Stoltenberg dutifully adopts and spins the Trump administration’s twisted narrative accusing China of being an "emerging threat" to global security.
The reality is the US is the primary threat to world security from its unhinged aggression towards China and simultaneously many other countries, including Russia, Iran, Venezuela and Syria.
With regard to China, Washington’s hostility is propelled by its demise as a global economic power. Accusing China of "currency manipulation" and "unfair trading practices" is just a pretext for justifying unlawful American militarism towards Beijing in a desperate attempt to salvage the chronic economic failure of US-style capitalism.
The Trump administration is brazenly trying to vandalize China’s economic development with punishing trade tariffs backed up with the mailed fist of militarism.
Pentagon chief Mark Esper last week gave notice that the US intends to install ground-based medium-range missiles in the Asia-Pacific. Conveniently, that move came only days after the Trump administration announced its official withdrawal from the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty with Russia.
Washington is giving itself a license to ring-fence China with nuclear and other ballistic missiles, which would have been banned under the INF Treaty.
The US and its NATO camouflage are escalating the danger of war in the Asia-Pacific through an unprecedented military buildup in the region. This week, the US nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan sailed through the South China Sea in the same week that the Trump administration ramped up its trade war with Beijing. In the name of "freedom of navigation", the US has been steadily increasing its warship presence near Chinese territory (in an analogous way to what it is doing in the Persian Gulf against Iran). Ironically, but with no intention of irony, American publication The Hill reported the USS Ronald Reagan was "a show of strength against Chinese aggression".
The absurd double-think of the Americans and their NATO minions with regard to China is echoed in similar outlandish claims that Russia is posing a threat to European security – omitting the fact that Russia’s proximity is because NATO has relentlessly moved its forces up to Russia’s borders.
Jens Stoltenberg and other European cheerleaders for American aggression are probably the most execrable specimens imaginable. The out-of-control warmongering by Washington against the rest of the world is so flagrant and audacious. And yet we see the pathetic spectacle of toadies like Stoltenberg turning reality on its head, thereby fueling the danger of wars while, no doubt, calculating his next highly-paid job at some future pro-NATO think-tank.
And typically, Western corporate-controlled news media report Washington and NATO’s absurd propaganda claims against China, Russia and others, as if worthy of serious consideration, instead of exposing them with the disdain that such warmongering propaganda deserves. What next? China and Russia are "threats" because they merely exist?
NATO’s China Double-Think
The US-led NATO alliance this week designated a whole new hemisphere to itself for “security” operations. No longer merely an “Atlantic” organization, it’s assuming the role of policing the Pacific. Quite a self-promotion.
NATO’s Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg, speaking during a visit to Australia, talked about "the need" to deploy military forces in Asia-Pacific to counter the "rise of China".
With laughable double-think, Stoltenberg declared: "This is not about moving NATO into the Pacific, but this is about responding to the fact that China is coming closer to us."
Right. So are there Chinese warships patrolling European waterways, or Chinese missile systems being established along America’s borders? No, the Norwegian former prime minister, who is the civilian boss of the US-led military alliance, “rationalized” his claim about China “coming closer to us” with the following alleged “offensive” behaviour.
"[China] Investing heavily in critical infrastructure in Europe, increased presence in the Arctic and also increased presence in Africa, and in cyberspace," he added, as quoted by Reuters.
In other words, in Stoltenberg’s view, China’s legitimate development as an economic power is somehow a malign security threat. How dare China do that!
Never mind that cash-strapped European governments have actually welcomed Chinese capital investment for building new telecoms infrastructure, as have many African nations who view China as a much more viable strategic partner after decades and centuries of US and European exploitation of that continent.
China is, in effect, being criminalized by the NATO talking-head for simply becoming a global economic powerhouse. And in that way, Stoltenberg is showing just how abject a lackey he is to his ultimate bosses in Washington.
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization has always been a euphemism to permit a European cover for American imperialism. Since its formation in 1949, NATO has long been used as a stalking horse for US aggression towards the Soviet Union, and latterly, the Russian Federation. The US-dominated alliance should have been abolished years ago when the Cold War officially ended in 1991. Rather, it has continued to expand, doubling in size to now include some 29 member states.
Now it is expanding its imperialist flunkey-role to target China, in total obeisance to US President Donald Trump’s policy of aggression towards Beijing. Note how Stoltenberg dutifully adopts and spins the Trump administration’s twisted narrative accusing China of being an "emerging threat" to global security.
The reality is the US is the primary threat to world security from its unhinged aggression towards China and simultaneously many other countries, including Russia, Iran, Venezuela and Syria.
With regard to China, Washington’s hostility is propelled by its demise as a global economic power. Accusing China of "currency manipulation" and "unfair trading practices" is just a pretext for justifying unlawful American militarism towards Beijing in a desperate attempt to salvage the chronic economic failure of US-style capitalism.
The Trump administration is brazenly trying to vandalize China’s economic development with punishing trade tariffs backed up with the mailed fist of militarism.
Pentagon chief Mark Esper last week gave notice that the US intends to install ground-based medium-range missiles in the Asia-Pacific. Conveniently, that move came only days after the Trump administration announced its official withdrawal from the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty with Russia.
Washington is giving itself a license to ring-fence China with nuclear and other ballistic missiles, which would have been banned under the INF Treaty.
The US and its NATO camouflage are escalating the danger of war in the Asia-Pacific through an unprecedented military buildup in the region. This week, the US nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan sailed through the South China Sea in the same week that the Trump administration ramped up its trade war with Beijing. In the name of "freedom of navigation", the US has been steadily increasing its warship presence near Chinese territory (in an analogous way to what it is doing in the Persian Gulf against Iran). Ironically, but with no intention of irony, American publication The Hill reported the USS Ronald Reagan was "a show of strength against Chinese aggression".
The absurd double-think of the Americans and their NATO minions with regard to China is echoed in similar outlandish claims that Russia is posing a threat to European security – omitting the fact that Russia’s proximity is because NATO has relentlessly moved its forces up to Russia’s borders.
Jens Stoltenberg and other European cheerleaders for American aggression are probably the most execrable specimens imaginable. The out-of-control warmongering by Washington against the rest of the world is so flagrant and audacious. And yet we see the pathetic spectacle of toadies like Stoltenberg turning reality on its head, thereby fueling the danger of wars while, no doubt, calculating his next highly-paid job at some future pro-NATO think-tank.
And typically, Western corporate-controlled news media report Washington and NATO’s absurd propaganda claims against China, Russia and others, as if worthy of serious consideration, instead of exposing them with the disdain that such warmongering propaganda deserves. What next? China and Russia are "threats" because they merely exist?
Thursday, August 8, 2019
SC194-12
https://www.globalresearch.ca/china-just-went-nuclear-trade-war-no-turning-back-now/5685836
China Just Went Nuclear in the Trade War, and There Is No Turning Back Now
When will Americans start to wake up and realize what is happening? At the end of last week, President Trump announced that the U.S. would be imposing a 10 percent tariff on 300 billion dollars worth of Chinese imports, and that marked a dramatic escalation in our trade war with China. This move by Trump came as a total shock to Chinese officials, and global financial markets were thrown into a state of turmoil. Since that announcement, we have been waiting for the other shoe to drop, because we knew that the Chinese would retaliate. But honestly, very few of the experts expected something like this. On Monday, China announced that it is going to completely stop buying U.S. agricultural products…
China confirmed reports that it was pulling out of U.S. agriculture as a weapon in the ongoing trade war.
A spokesperson for the Chinese Ministry of Commerce said Chinese companies have stopped purchasing U.S. agricultural products in response to President Trump’s new 10% tariffs on $300 billion of Chinese goods.
This is essentially a trade war equivalent of a nuclear bomb.
If the Chinese would have slapped U.S. agricultural products with tariffs, that would have been a proportional response. But to quit buying them entirely is an unprecedented escalation in a trade war that is really starting to spiral out of control.
And it is also clearly a political attack on President Trump. The Chinese know that Trump is highly popular in rural areas, and this ban on U.S. agricultural products is going to severely hurt farmers in rural areas all across the United States.
U.S. voters tend to be more influenced by their bank accounts than by anything else, and so this is a smart strategic move by the Chinese if they would like to see a Democrat get elected in 2020.
In 2017, the Chinese bought 19.5 billion dollars worth of U.S. agricultural products, and that number dropped to just 9.1 billion dollars in 2018.
Now that number is going to zero, and according to Farm Bureau Federation President Zippy Duvall this latest move by China is going to be “a body blow to thousands of farmers and ranchers who are already struggling to get by.”
Please say a prayer for our farmers, because they really need it.
In addition to ending purchases of U.S. agricultural products, the Chinese also allowed the value of the yuan to decline dramatically on Monday. This really rattled global financial markets, and shortly thereafter U.S. Treasury officials formally designated China as a “currency manipulator”. The following comes directly from the official website of the Treasury Department…
The Omnibus Trade and Competitiveness Act of 1988 requires the Secretary of the Treasury to analyze the exchange rate policies of other countries. Under Section 3004 of the Act, the Secretary must “consider whether countries manipulate the rate of exchange between their currency and the United States dollar for purposes of preventing effective balance of payments adjustments or gaining unfair competitive advantage in international trade.” Secretary Mnuchin, under the auspices of President Trump, has today determined that China is a Currency Manipulator.
As a result of this determination, Secretary Mnuchin will engage with the International Monetary Fund to eliminate the unfair competitive advantage created by China’s latest actions.
This is the first time since the 1990s that the Treasury Department has used this designation on any of our trading partners, and it is the kind of move that would not be made unless all hopes for a trade deal were completely gone.
Of course the Chinese wouldn’t have made the moves that they made either if they were still holding out hope for a negotiated solution. According to one market analyst that was quoted by CNBC, the Chinese are “signalling that they have lost confidence that they can reach an agreement with Trump.”
So what this means is that in the short-term things are going to get bad for the global economy.
Really bad.
In the longer term, the structure of the entire global economic system could change dramatically, and this will especially be true if Donald Trump emerges triumphant in 2020. According to economist Neil Shearing, we could literally be looking at “the end of the world as we know it”…
Among the implications for more deterioration in the global picture that Shearing cites are the “disintegration of the rules-based system” that has governed international commerce since the end of the World War II, and a potential “Balkanization” of the world economy as the U.S. and China develop their own standards, tech platforms and payment systems.
“It’s too soon to say exactly how events will pan out, but this casts the escalation in the US-China trade war over the past year in an altogether more ominous light. We may be witnessing the end of the world as we know it,” he wrote.
It is difficult to imagine a world in which there is no trade between the United States and China....
....It looks like this trade war could be the spark that plunges the global economy into utter chaos, and right now very few Americans seem to understand the true scope of the economic nightmare that appears to be headed our way.
China Just Went Nuclear in the Trade War, and There Is No Turning Back Now
When will Americans start to wake up and realize what is happening? At the end of last week, President Trump announced that the U.S. would be imposing a 10 percent tariff on 300 billion dollars worth of Chinese imports, and that marked a dramatic escalation in our trade war with China. This move by Trump came as a total shock to Chinese officials, and global financial markets were thrown into a state of turmoil. Since that announcement, we have been waiting for the other shoe to drop, because we knew that the Chinese would retaliate. But honestly, very few of the experts expected something like this. On Monday, China announced that it is going to completely stop buying U.S. agricultural products…
China confirmed reports that it was pulling out of U.S. agriculture as a weapon in the ongoing trade war.
A spokesperson for the Chinese Ministry of Commerce said Chinese companies have stopped purchasing U.S. agricultural products in response to President Trump’s new 10% tariffs on $300 billion of Chinese goods.
This is essentially a trade war equivalent of a nuclear bomb.
If the Chinese would have slapped U.S. agricultural products with tariffs, that would have been a proportional response. But to quit buying them entirely is an unprecedented escalation in a trade war that is really starting to spiral out of control.
And it is also clearly a political attack on President Trump. The Chinese know that Trump is highly popular in rural areas, and this ban on U.S. agricultural products is going to severely hurt farmers in rural areas all across the United States.
U.S. voters tend to be more influenced by their bank accounts than by anything else, and so this is a smart strategic move by the Chinese if they would like to see a Democrat get elected in 2020.
In 2017, the Chinese bought 19.5 billion dollars worth of U.S. agricultural products, and that number dropped to just 9.1 billion dollars in 2018.
Now that number is going to zero, and according to Farm Bureau Federation President Zippy Duvall this latest move by China is going to be “a body blow to thousands of farmers and ranchers who are already struggling to get by.”
Please say a prayer for our farmers, because they really need it.
In addition to ending purchases of U.S. agricultural products, the Chinese also allowed the value of the yuan to decline dramatically on Monday. This really rattled global financial markets, and shortly thereafter U.S. Treasury officials formally designated China as a “currency manipulator”. The following comes directly from the official website of the Treasury Department…
The Omnibus Trade and Competitiveness Act of 1988 requires the Secretary of the Treasury to analyze the exchange rate policies of other countries. Under Section 3004 of the Act, the Secretary must “consider whether countries manipulate the rate of exchange between their currency and the United States dollar for purposes of preventing effective balance of payments adjustments or gaining unfair competitive advantage in international trade.” Secretary Mnuchin, under the auspices of President Trump, has today determined that China is a Currency Manipulator.
As a result of this determination, Secretary Mnuchin will engage with the International Monetary Fund to eliminate the unfair competitive advantage created by China’s latest actions.
This is the first time since the 1990s that the Treasury Department has used this designation on any of our trading partners, and it is the kind of move that would not be made unless all hopes for a trade deal were completely gone.
Of course the Chinese wouldn’t have made the moves that they made either if they were still holding out hope for a negotiated solution. According to one market analyst that was quoted by CNBC, the Chinese are “signalling that they have lost confidence that they can reach an agreement with Trump.”
So what this means is that in the short-term things are going to get bad for the global economy.
Really bad.
In the longer term, the structure of the entire global economic system could change dramatically, and this will especially be true if Donald Trump emerges triumphant in 2020. According to economist Neil Shearing, we could literally be looking at “the end of the world as we know it”…
Among the implications for more deterioration in the global picture that Shearing cites are the “disintegration of the rules-based system” that has governed international commerce since the end of the World War II, and a potential “Balkanization” of the world economy as the U.S. and China develop their own standards, tech platforms and payment systems.
“It’s too soon to say exactly how events will pan out, but this casts the escalation in the US-China trade war over the past year in an altogether more ominous light. We may be witnessing the end of the world as we know it,” he wrote.
It is difficult to imagine a world in which there is no trade between the United States and China....
....It looks like this trade war could be the spark that plunges the global economy into utter chaos, and right now very few Americans seem to understand the true scope of the economic nightmare that appears to be headed our way.
Wednesday, August 7, 2019
SC194-11
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/52044.htm
Tulsi Gabbard: R.I.P.
It is unfortunate that Tulsi Gabbard succumbed to the Israel Lobby. The forces of the Empire saw it as a sign of weakness and have set about destroying her.
The ruling elite see Gabbard as a threat just as they saw Trump as a threat. A threat is an attractive political candidate who questions the Empire’s agenda. Trump questioned the hostility toward Russia orchestrated by the military/security complex. Gabbard questions the Empire’s wars in the Middle East. This is questioning that encroaches on the agendas of the military/security complex and Israel Lobby. If fear of Israel is what caused Gabbard to vote the AIPAC line on the bill forbidding criticism of Israel, she won’t be able to stick to her line against Washington’s aggression in the Middle East. Israel is behind that aggression as it serves Israeli interests.
But the Empire is taking no chances. The Empire has sicced its Presstitute Battalion on her. Josh Rogin (Washington Post), Joy Reid (MSNBC), Wajahat Ali (New York Times and CNN), and, of course the Twitter trolls paid to slander and misrepresent public figures that the Empire targets. Google added its weight to the obfuscation of Gabbard.
Gabbard, who in the second “debate” between Democratic Party candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination, took down the despicable Kamala Harris with ease, was promptly labeled “an Assad apologist” and a conspiracist with Russia to put herself as a Putin agent in the White House. https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2019/08/01/crazed-democrats-now-claim-it-is-tulsi-gabbard-who-is-in-conspiracy-with-putin/
Wars in the Middle East against Israel’s enemies and preparation for major wars against Iran, Russia, and China are the bread and butter for the powerful US military/security complex lobby. All that is important to the military/security complex is their profits, not whether they get all of us killed. In other words, their propaganda about protecting America is a lie. They endanger us all in order to have enemies in order to justify their massive budget and power.
Those of us who actually know, such as myself and Stephen Cohen, have been warning for years that the orchestrated hostility against Russia is producing a far more dangerous Cold War than the original one. Indeed, beginning with the criminal George W. Bush regime, the arms control treaties achieved at great political expense by US and Soviet leaders have been abandoned by Washington. The latest treaty to be discarded by Washington in service to the military/security lobby is the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) negotiated by President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. This treaty banned missiles that Washington could place in Europe on Russia’s border with which to attack Russia with little or no reaction time, and Russian missiles that could be used to attack Washington’s NATO puppet states in Europe and UK. The treaty resulted in the elimination of 2,692 missiles and a decade of verification inspections that satisfied both parties to the agreement. But suddenly Washington has pulled out of the treaty. The main purpose of pulling out of the treaty is to enable the military/security complex to develop and produce new missiles at the taxpayers’ expense, but Washington also sees a military advantage in withdrawing from the INF treaty.
Washington, of course, blames the US withdrawal on Russia, just as Washington blames every country that Washington intends to attack. But it is completely obvious even to a moron that Russia has no interest whatsoever in abandoning the treaty. Russian intermediate-range missiles cannot reach the United States. Russia has no reason to attack Europe, which has no military forces of any consequence. It is the American nuclear missiles on European soil that are the problem
Washington, however, does gain by tearing up the INF treaty. At Europe’s risk, not America’s, Washington’s intermediate-range nuclear missiles stationed in Europe on Russia’s borders permit a preemptive nuclear attack on Russia. Because of proximity, the warning time is only a couple of minutes. Washington’s crazed war planners believe that so much of the Russian retaliatory capacity would be destroyed, that Russia would surrender rather than retaliate with diminished forces and risk a second attack.
Putin stresses this danger as does the Russian military. US missiles on Russia’s border puts the world on a hair trigger. Aside from the fact that a nuclear attack on Russia is the likely intent of the criminal neoconservatives, nuclear warning systems are notorious for false alarms. During Cold War I, both sides worked to build trust, but since the criminal Clinton regime Washington has worked to destroy all trust between the two dominant nuclear powers. All that is required to obliterate life on earth, thanks entirely to the crazed fools in Washington, is one false alarm received by the Russians. Unlike past false alarms, next time the Russians will have no choice but to believe it.
Intermediate-range nuclear missiles leave no time for a phone call between Putin and Trump. The Russian leader who has suffered hundreds of diplomatic insults, demonization of his person and his country, illegal sanctions, endless false accusations, and endless threats cannot assume that the warning is false.
The idiots in Washington and the presstitutes have programmed the end of the world. When the alarm goes off, the Russian leader has no choice but to push the button.
Any remaining doubt in the Russian government of Washington’s hostile intentions toward Russia has been dispelled by Trump’s National Security Adviser, the neocon warmonger John Bolton. Bolton recently announced that the last remaining arms control agreement, START, will not be renewed by Washington in 2021.
Thus, the trust built between the nuclear powers that began with President John F. Kennedy and reached its greatest success with Reagan and Gorbachev has been erased. It will be lucky if the world survives the destruction of trust between the two major nuclear powers.
The American government in Washington has been made so utterly stupid by its arrogant hubris that it has no comprehension of the dangerous situation that it, and it alone, has created. We are all at risk every minute of our lives because of the power, of which President Eisenhower warned us more than a half century ago to no avail, of the US military/security complex, an organized powerful force determined and able to destroy any American president who would threaten their budget and power by making peace....
Tulsi Gabbard: R.I.P.
It is unfortunate that Tulsi Gabbard succumbed to the Israel Lobby. The forces of the Empire saw it as a sign of weakness and have set about destroying her.
The ruling elite see Gabbard as a threat just as they saw Trump as a threat. A threat is an attractive political candidate who questions the Empire’s agenda. Trump questioned the hostility toward Russia orchestrated by the military/security complex. Gabbard questions the Empire’s wars in the Middle East. This is questioning that encroaches on the agendas of the military/security complex and Israel Lobby. If fear of Israel is what caused Gabbard to vote the AIPAC line on the bill forbidding criticism of Israel, she won’t be able to stick to her line against Washington’s aggression in the Middle East. Israel is behind that aggression as it serves Israeli interests.
But the Empire is taking no chances. The Empire has sicced its Presstitute Battalion on her. Josh Rogin (Washington Post), Joy Reid (MSNBC), Wajahat Ali (New York Times and CNN), and, of course the Twitter trolls paid to slander and misrepresent public figures that the Empire targets. Google added its weight to the obfuscation of Gabbard.
Gabbard, who in the second “debate” between Democratic Party candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination, took down the despicable Kamala Harris with ease, was promptly labeled “an Assad apologist” and a conspiracist with Russia to put herself as a Putin agent in the White House. https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2019/08/01/crazed-democrats-now-claim-it-is-tulsi-gabbard-who-is-in-conspiracy-with-putin/
Wars in the Middle East against Israel’s enemies and preparation for major wars against Iran, Russia, and China are the bread and butter for the powerful US military/security complex lobby. All that is important to the military/security complex is their profits, not whether they get all of us killed. In other words, their propaganda about protecting America is a lie. They endanger us all in order to have enemies in order to justify their massive budget and power.
Those of us who actually know, such as myself and Stephen Cohen, have been warning for years that the orchestrated hostility against Russia is producing a far more dangerous Cold War than the original one. Indeed, beginning with the criminal George W. Bush regime, the arms control treaties achieved at great political expense by US and Soviet leaders have been abandoned by Washington. The latest treaty to be discarded by Washington in service to the military/security lobby is the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) negotiated by President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. This treaty banned missiles that Washington could place in Europe on Russia’s border with which to attack Russia with little or no reaction time, and Russian missiles that could be used to attack Washington’s NATO puppet states in Europe and UK. The treaty resulted in the elimination of 2,692 missiles and a decade of verification inspections that satisfied both parties to the agreement. But suddenly Washington has pulled out of the treaty. The main purpose of pulling out of the treaty is to enable the military/security complex to develop and produce new missiles at the taxpayers’ expense, but Washington also sees a military advantage in withdrawing from the INF treaty.
Washington, of course, blames the US withdrawal on Russia, just as Washington blames every country that Washington intends to attack. But it is completely obvious even to a moron that Russia has no interest whatsoever in abandoning the treaty. Russian intermediate-range missiles cannot reach the United States. Russia has no reason to attack Europe, which has no military forces of any consequence. It is the American nuclear missiles on European soil that are the problem
Washington, however, does gain by tearing up the INF treaty. At Europe’s risk, not America’s, Washington’s intermediate-range nuclear missiles stationed in Europe on Russia’s borders permit a preemptive nuclear attack on Russia. Because of proximity, the warning time is only a couple of minutes. Washington’s crazed war planners believe that so much of the Russian retaliatory capacity would be destroyed, that Russia would surrender rather than retaliate with diminished forces and risk a second attack.
Putin stresses this danger as does the Russian military. US missiles on Russia’s border puts the world on a hair trigger. Aside from the fact that a nuclear attack on Russia is the likely intent of the criminal neoconservatives, nuclear warning systems are notorious for false alarms. During Cold War I, both sides worked to build trust, but since the criminal Clinton regime Washington has worked to destroy all trust between the two dominant nuclear powers. All that is required to obliterate life on earth, thanks entirely to the crazed fools in Washington, is one false alarm received by the Russians. Unlike past false alarms, next time the Russians will have no choice but to believe it.
Intermediate-range nuclear missiles leave no time for a phone call between Putin and Trump. The Russian leader who has suffered hundreds of diplomatic insults, demonization of his person and his country, illegal sanctions, endless false accusations, and endless threats cannot assume that the warning is false.
The idiots in Washington and the presstitutes have programmed the end of the world. When the alarm goes off, the Russian leader has no choice but to push the button.
Any remaining doubt in the Russian government of Washington’s hostile intentions toward Russia has been dispelled by Trump’s National Security Adviser, the neocon warmonger John Bolton. Bolton recently announced that the last remaining arms control agreement, START, will not be renewed by Washington in 2021.
Thus, the trust built between the nuclear powers that began with President John F. Kennedy and reached its greatest success with Reagan and Gorbachev has been erased. It will be lucky if the world survives the destruction of trust between the two major nuclear powers.
The American government in Washington has been made so utterly stupid by its arrogant hubris that it has no comprehension of the dangerous situation that it, and it alone, has created. We are all at risk every minute of our lives because of the power, of which President Eisenhower warned us more than a half century ago to no avail, of the US military/security complex, an organized powerful force determined and able to destroy any American president who would threaten their budget and power by making peace....
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